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Course Administrative Details and Exam Structure
Syllabus and Course Schedule:
The course schedule and announcement details are explicitly listed in the course outline and on the calendar page.
Coverage spans the historical period from the Proclamation of 1763 through the Declaration of Independence in 1776, accounting for a 13-year period of escalating back-and-forth tension between the American colonists and the British crown.
Exam Grade Breakdown:
Essay: Accounts for of the total exam grade.
Short Answer Questions: Accounts for of the total exam grade.
Multiple Choice Questions: Accounts for of the total exam grade.
Short Answer Section Rules:
There will be a total of short answer options provided on the exam.
Students must choose and answer exactly out of the options.
The prompt provides options so that students who miss class sessions or appointments are not penalized by being forced to answer a prompt on material they missed.
Warning: There is zero extra credit for answering more than short answer questions. Answering extra questions only wastes time.
Multiple Choice Section Rules:
Consists of approximately questions.
Questions are drawn directly from material, topics, and sub-commodores discussed during class lectures.
Shift to the British Southern Strategy (1780)
British Abandonment of New England:
The British abandoned New England because the region was economically unprofitable, generated no money, and cost a fortune to manage.
The population in New England continuously resisted British troops and maintained a decade-long economic boycott.
The British completely left Boston and New England, retaining only New York due to its valuable harbor.
Rationale for the Southern Strategy:
The British believed that crushing the Patriot militias in the American South would allow them to control the lucrative tobacco trade.
Securing tobacco revenue and imposing local taxes was designed to alleviate the massive national debt Great Britain incurred during prior conflicts.
Initial British Setbacks and Successes in the South:
Frontier Warfare Failure: The British plan to utilize frontier warfare failed early when George Rogers Clark neutralized the Shawnee using extreme prejudice and psychological warfare, knocking them out of the war for approximately 1.5 years.
Capture of Charleston: The British army initially achieved tactical success by capturing Benjamin Lincoln and his army at Charleston, South Carolina.
Waxhaws Massacre: British forces massacred the Patriot militia at Waxhaws. This proved to be a severe strategic blunder, as the brutality turned neutral and hesitant southern locals against the British.
The Battle of Kings Mountain (October 1780)
Geographic Context and Topography:
Located in North Carolina within the Appalachian Mountains, which are the oldest and most eroded mountains in North America.
Mount Mitchell is the highest peak in the Appalachians at approximately (a few hundred feet higher than Clingmans Dome). Biking up Mount Mitchell involves extreme temperature drops, such as dropping from in Asheville to the low with rain at the peak.
Kings Mountain features a high, dome-shaped ridge tapering into a long ramp-like structure.
The slopes of Kings Mountain were covered in dense mountain laurel thickets, where the only pathways were narrow deer trails, rendering traditional military formations impossible.
Nature of the Conflict:
The fighting in the South devolved into a localized civil war between opposing factions of Americans settling personal grudges, with the British army acting primarily as administrators.
General Lord Cornwallis issued an ultimatum to the mountain folk of North Carolina: surrender and align with the Crown, or face massacre and the burning of their churches.
Cornwallis dispatched American Tory (Loyalist) militias up into the hills to enforcement this order and scour the North Carolina hill settlements.
Mobilization of the Overmountain Men:
In response to Cornwallis's threats, local settlers contacted their relatives in Kentucky and Tennessee for assistance.
Under frontier culture, debts and grudges are strictly honored (analogous to the Hatfield-McCoy dispute, which lasted over a property boundary).
Six distinct bands of Overmountain Men marched east from Kentucky and Tennessee to defend their families and settle their favor with George Washington.
Key Figures at Kings Mountain:
Lord Cornwallis: High-ranking British general who was formidable and highly capable (later successfully commanding British forces in India), but made a critical strategic error by provoking the mountain settlers.
John Severe (John Sevier): Local preacher and prominent figure in East Tennessee (after whom Sevierville, Sevier County, and regional institutions are named; grandfather of his namesake). In the summer of 1780, Severe preached from the Book of Ecclesiastes ("a time to build and a time to tear down… a time to make war") to rally his congregation for vengeance.
Major Patrick Ferguson: The single official British soldier present on the battlefield. Ferguson had previously spared George Washington's life at Brandywine Creek out of gentlemanly conduct.
Execution of the Battle:
The Tory militia camped at the top of Kings Mountain, assuming the high ground made them secure against standard tactics.
The Overmountain Men advanced through the thickets as snipers using long-range hunting rifles rather than short-range military muskets. They used terrain cover to mask their advance and picked off the Tories from afar.
The Tories attempted musket volleys and bayonet charges down the slopes, but the dense brush rendered bayonets useless impediments.
Ferguson was accompanied by two professional girlfriends from Virginia. Upon being captured by the Overmountain Men, the women immediately identified Ferguson, revealing that he was wearing a plaid coat to disguise his officer status.
Attempting to break through on horseback to fetch cavalry reinforcements, Ferguson was shot over a dozen times by sniper fire. Both he and his horse rolled down the hill, and he died on the field.
Surrender and Aftermath:
Following Ferguson's death, the Tories attempted to surrender and asked for quarter (a military ceasefire/timeout).
The Overmountain Men refused and declared they would give "Tarleton's Quarter" (referencing Bannister Tarleton's massacre of Americans at Waxhaws). Fighting continued until dark.
The captured Tories spent the night listening to the Overmountain Men explicitly discuss executing them the next morning with knives and tomahawks due to low ammunition supplies.
The following morning, John Severe addressed his church congregation, declaring that while killing in war is acceptable, execution in cold blood is murder. Severe and his men immediately withdrew to return across the Smoky Mountains before October snows set in.
Influenced by Severe's moral declaration, the remaining five bands of Overmountain Men also abandoned the execution plan and departed for home.
Strategic Outcome: The battle totally destroyed the local Tory militia structure, leaving Lord Cornwallis completely without local guides or scouts in the Carolinas.
The Continental Campaign in the South and Path to Yorktown
Nathaniel Green's Strategy:
General Nathaniel Green (Nathanael Greene) conducted a strategic retreat across the Carolinas, drawing Cornwallis deeper into the interior.
Green utilized maps drawn by Washington's mapmaker to exploit every river crossing in the Carolinas. Because the British lost their local scouts at Kings Mountain, Green constantly escaped before complete destruction.
Green repeatedly engaged the British late in the day, absorbed punishment, and slipped away under cover of darkness to fight again miles down the road (analogous to retreating in sequence from Sparta to Coteville, Livingston, and Gainsboro in the Upper Cumberland).
Battle of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse:
Cowpens: General Daniel Morgan delivered a decisive victory against Bannister Tarleton, destroying Tarleton's light horse units.
Guilford Courthouse: Cornwallis engaged Green in an exhausting battle (depicted loosely in The Patriot). Unable to break the American lines, Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire grape shot directly into the rear of his own troops to clear the mixed hand-to-hand combat, severely damaging British troop morale.
Cornwallis's Move to Yorktown (1781):
Exhausted and lacking supplies, Cornwallis declined to winter at Wilmington, North Carolina, because the geographical bulge of the North Carolina coastline exposes southern harbors to severe winter hurricanes.
Cornwallis marched north to Yorktown, Virginia—an old tobacco port located on the Chesapeake Bay—expecting easy sea access and resupply from the Royal Navy.
Naval Intervention and the Siege of Yorktown (1781)
Arrival of the French Fleet:
Four years after promising aid, the French Navy arrived in full force, having spent the intervening years building ships, training crews, and provisioning.
Washington originally wanted to attack New York City, but French commanders rejected the idea as too hazardous for their fleet.
The French Navy, commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau (title format used in operational command), engaged and defeated the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Chesapeake. This marked the first major French victory over the British navy in centuries (dating back to /).
Rochambeau exploited British tactical confusion—where half the British fleet followed one tactical plan while the other half followed another—by maintaining a strictly coordinated attack.
The Siege Dynamics:
Cornwallis took refuge inside Yorktown behind a defensive perimeter of small earthen forts (redoubts).
The victory of the French Navy trapped Cornwallis by sea, while a combined Franco-American ground force surrounded him by land.
British Commander-in-Chief Henry Clinton remained in New York City and failed to send prompt relief, distracted in part by an ongoing extramarital affair with the wife of one of his subordinate officers who was currently trapped with Cornwallis at Yorktown.
Crisis in the Continental Army (Morristown and Newburgh):
During the encampment at Morristown, New Jersey (which experienced colder weather and worse hardship than Valley Forge), Pennsylvania troops mutinied and marched home.
The army had gone unpaid for . Officer corps members approached Washington proposing to march on Continental Congress in Philadelphia and make Washington the King of America.
Washington quelled the mutiny by producing a letter from Congress and putting on reading glasses, remarking: "Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country."
Washington revealed he was seeking a mortgage on his personal estate at Mount Vernon to help finance army pay, having exhausted his and Martha's personal fortunes. Shamed by his sacrifice, his officers abandoned the mutiny.
The Final Assault on Yorktown:
Washington left Henry Knox outside New York City with instructions to use coordinated artillery kill-maps to hold off Clinton's men.
Washington marched south with Continental regulars and New Jersey militia, joining Rochambeau's French marines to form a combined force of men against Cornwallis's defenders.
Alexander Hamilton led a night bayonet attack on key British redoubts. To ensure complete stealth, troops were ordered to march with unloaded muskets and take the outer forts using only bayonets.
Hamilton suffered a wrist wound during a sword fight with a British officer during the assault.
With the redoubts fallen and heavy siege artillery firing directly into the citadel, Cornwallis surrendered.
Surrender Protocols:
Cornwallis claimed physical illness (stomach sickness) and sent his second-in-command to deliver his sword.
Washington refused to accept the surrender from a second-in-command and directed the British officer to surrender to General Benjamin Lincoln, who had previously been captured by the British at Charleston.
Treaty of Paris and Immediate Post-War Aftermath
Negotiations and Treaty Terms:
Negotiations lasted resulting in separate peace treaties between the individual American states/colonies and Great Britain.
The Americans negotiated a separate peace with the British without French consent, deeply angering the French government and straining Franco-American diplomatic relations for over .
Great Britain recognized American independence and agreed to evacuate Yorktown, New York City, and Fort Detroit.
The British promised to cease harassing American shipping and stop inciting Native American tribes (such as the Iroquois and Shawnee). The British violated the shipping promises; smallpox severely weakened the Iroquois, but the British continued inciting the Shawnee and the Creek Confederation in the South.
Washington's Resignation:
In 1783, following the formal signing of the treaty, George Washington appeared before Congress, resigned his military commission, and voluntarily returned to private life at Mount Vernon.
Upon hearing that Washington had voluntarily surrendered supreme military power, King George III of Great Britain sat silent for and reportedly stated: "It is my very great misfortune to be the second greatest George of my age."
The Articles of Confederation Period (1783–1787)
The Post-Traumatic Stress Decompression Phase:
Having lived under continuous war conditions and heightened adrenaline for (from to ), the American populace suffered from collective post-traumatic stress.
Unlike the French Revolution—where revolutionaries began public executions with a razor blade (guillotine) as performance art within —Americans managed a peaceful transition by focusing intensely on personal labor, property restoration, and family re-connection.
Scuba Diving Decompression Analogy: Air consists of approximately nitrogen and oxygen. Under pressure at depth, excess nitrogen dissolves into the bloodstream. Rising faster than exhaled bubbles causes the nitrogen to come out of solution as gas bubbles in joints or spinal columns (the bends), causing paralysis (such as a diver suffering neck paralysis). The Articles of Confederation served as a necessary political decompression stop to let society cool off.
Structural Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation:
Created an intentionally weak central government (the U.S. Congress) because citizens feared central tyranny.
Prohibitions on Central Power:
No power to levy taxes.
No power to regulate interstate or foreign commerce.
No power to draft or raise a standing army.
No executive branch (no President).
No national court system.
No power to coin or print a unified national currency.
State Power Dominance: Individual state governments retained full sovereignty, possessing governors, courts, local tax authority, militias, and political power.
Economic Collapse in the North: While the South maintained income by selling tobacco to addicted British buyers, the Northern economy collapsed because the Triangular Trade was permanently destroyed.
Major Successes under the Articles:
Resolution of Western Land Claims: The original states surrendered their extensive, overlapping western territorial claims (e.g., North Carolina claiming all of Tennessee; Virginia claiming Indiana, Illinois, and Southern Michigan). Adhering to the principle of "no taxation without representation," the states allowed these territories to form new states. Kentucky became the first new state in , followed by Tennessee in .
The Northwest Ordinance: Established the Ohio River as the definitive geographic boundary regarding slavery. Territory north of the Ohio River strictly prohibited slavery, while territory south of the river permitted it.
Shays' Rebellion (1786) and the Call for Reform
Causes of the Rebellion:
Led by Daniel Shays (spelled Shays'), a decorated former Continental Army major.
The Massachusetts state legislature demanded property tax payments exclusively in gold and silver (specie), but provided no circulating coinage for citizens to obtain.
Urban merchants in Boston (who held gold/silver from trade with Great Britain and France) foreclosed on rural farmers' lands through tax auctions.
Merchants bought agricultural land for fractions of its worth and attempted to rent the farms back to the original farmer owners. Because the urban merchants appointed state judges, legal appeals failed.
Outbreak and Resentment:
Farmers burned down tax offices and tarred and feathered tax collectors (exact tactics used against the British in the ).
The conflict pitted country farmers against city merchants and unemployed urban workers hired as militia enforcement.
Facing criminal charges, Shays fled to British-controlled Canada to avoid imprisonment by his former revolutionary allies.
Historical Result:
Shays' Rebellion demonstrated that economic chaos and weak central authority would lead to repeated civil uprisings. This event served as the direct catalyst for calling a Constitutional Convention to replace the Articles of Confederation.
The Constitutional Convention and Structural Principles
Convention Organization (Philadelphia, 1787–1788):
Delegates selected George Washington to serve as the President/Administrator of the convention.
Enforced strict secrecy ("what happens in Philadelphia stays in Philadelphia") to allow open debate. Heated arguments and direct physical fistfights occurred between delegates, requiring Washington to call frequent cooling-off breaks.
Delegates determined the Articles of Confederation were unrepairable and opted to draft an entirely new document: The United States Constitution (consisting of original Articles, followed immediately by Amendments forming the Bill of Rights).
Underlying Philosophical Concepts:
Core Objective: Balancing individual liberty against national security.
Concept of Power: Power was viewed as inherently dangerous and corrupting, similar to cumulative X-ray radiation. (In medical X-rays, technicians step behind lead walls because cumulative exposure damages cells; similarly, granting concentrated power morally corrupts political leaders because "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely").
View of Human Nature: Framework built on the premise that humans are inherently self-interested, aggressive, and prone to conflict (analogous to competitive contact sports like football, where players physically drive opponents into the ground to achieve their goals).
Systems of Division and Separation:
Vertical Division (Federalism): Power split between strong state governments and the central national government. Local crimes (such as armed robbery of a store) are strictly handled by state courts and state law enforcement, not federal agencies like the FBI.
Historical Speed Limit Example: In the , the federal government mandated a national speed limit. States including Idaho, Nebraska, and the Dakotas sued the federal government, winning a landmark decision that restored the power to set highway speed limits back to individual state governments (celebrated in Sammy Hagar's rock song I Can't Drive 55).
Horizontal Division (Central Government): The national government's power was subdivided into three co-equal branches to enforce checks and balances:
Executive Branch: Headed by the President.
Legislative Branch: Subdivided again into a bicameral structure consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives to balance small and large state representation.
Judicial Branch: Established as an independent judiciary (unlike the English court system, which directly obeyed the executive crown).